The Ghost and the Stranger
by free-pirate
Summary: Sirius remembers strife, but happiness is like a bracket that once held a beautiful stone; he knows it was there, once, but he's never getting it back. Post-Azkaban. Wolfstar if you squint.


**_Author's Note: _**_I just woke up this morning and typed this, honestly. o.O no idea where it came from. Enjoy?_

* * *

Coming back to life, real life after Azkaban is a bit like living a lifetime underwater and then resurfacing. Of course, for someone who lives a lifetime underwater, there would be certain inconveniences associated with this. The least of these is adapting to actually breathing straight oxygen. It results in a lot of gasping and scrambling and feeling (if not actually being) a fish out of water, stranded on a beach somewhere and collecting sand on its scaly hide as it dries out.

Yes, well. Sort of like that.

It takes a while for Sirius to relearn how to do certain things, like use eating utensils. During those first few months back at Grimmauld place, it feels like he isn't human at all. Like he's sunk into the walls of this old, creaky house, become a fixture or part of the wallpaper. A name with no face on a wall of names.

It's magnified when actual people start coming to stay. For a while at first, it's just Remus. He abandons his run-down flat for the dark, musky, filthy interior of the Black family mansion. Takes the first livable bedroom on the second floor because, he says, it was just the first to come available.

Sirius knows that it's more because Remus's knees aren't as young as they used to be, but more than anything else in Azkaban he's learned to keep these sort of thoughts to himself.

* * *

Sirius can't assess how he's changed, really. He's a far cry from the brash, outspoken teenager he vaguely remembers being, an even farther one from the reckless man he'd become after. Now he doesn't even feel like the same person, like he's residing in someone else's skin with a mind that doesn't feel like it belongs to him.

There are several things that could be considered bad about this.

It's the Dementors' job to take every happy memory a person has and... well, eat it. Before Azkaban, Sirius had a lot of happy memories. It drives him mad because he knows they were there at one point and now they're just not. He's hyperaware of the fact that there are empty places, like stones that have fallen out of a ring and left the placeholder, a tarnished, brass, ugly reminder of the beauty that once resided there and never will again.

He catches Remus looking at him sometimes, when he comes close to dropping something because his fingers don't want to cooperate or when he's trying to remember a thought he's processed and forgotten. It's a pitying look that tugs at the corner of his mouth, like he's trying to smile at Sirius and reassure him that it's alright and he doesn't have to get everything back right away.

But saying things like that goes a bit beyond the realms of things Remus lets slip past that big infallible wall he's created, and the look is gone when he realizes he's doing it. It makes Sirius wonder what Remus is keeping from him.

* * *

Other Order members start to filter through the house on occasion. Mad-Eye with his leg and his staff, double-clunking every time he walks upstairs. Kingsley, deep voice lowered so as to not disturb the sleeping, shrieking portraits. His cousin Tonks who he vaguely remembers as a child, fresh from her Auror training and full of life. It makes him feel old, and most of the time when there are people around he goes and visits Buckbeak.

Large groups still make him slightly nervous, still make him shake and want to pull out his hair. When the Weasley clan arrives, and it's summer and there are school-age children _everywhere_, he just about goes mad. Molly keeps them in line, or tries too, but there isn't much she can do with Fred and George. It should make him happy, nostalgic, to see so much life.

But it just makes him feel worn-out, like he's too damaged to belong with people. Especially if he can't stand a couple of school kids being... well, being kids. It's the kind of thing he thinks he would have encouraged before, but now it's just another thing he can add to the growing list of things that've changed.

* * *

Even though Remus and Molly and everyone else have talked about him, it still makes the bottom drop out of his stomach when he hears that Harry's on his way. They're in a meeting when Arthur reports that the guards sent to assure his safe arrival have just sent word that they'll be arriving shortly. There's an electric current that seems to be riding the air, making everyone grin and loose track of their sentences.

Thing is, he's mostly nervous. He's created this picture of his best friend's son from what the others have told him. Remus mostly talks about how much like Lily and James the boy is, and how he's got this special brand of courage that's both of them and all his own at the same time. Molly talks about how polite and quiet he chooses to be around people, and how horrible his aunt and uncle treat him during the holidays. She talks about him with more than a hint of pride, like he's her son.

Sirius tries to be polite when she speaks of him this way, he really does. He glances at Remus to see if his friend is as disgruntled as he is about Molly taking Harry under her wing. But the whole Order, all those who've met him treat him this way even if it isn't as blatantly obvious. Harry's an orphan in all of the normal meanings of the word (and it still sends a hot flash of guilt through Sirius's stomach when he even thinks about Harry as an orphan), but every adult he meets acts in his parent's stead.

He's everyone's son, and Sirius can't remember if that would make James proud or not.

When he finally does arrive, when Sirius glances up from the spot on the table he's been staring at for the past fifteen minutes and sees Harry standing a little beyond the doorframe, he can't help but stare.

He's sure he's been told before, but he can't help thinking that Harry looks almost exactly like James did. He can't, per se, make a visual comparison, because all he remembers of James through the gaps in his memory are unruly black hair and a disregard for authority, but for some reason he knows that they're scarily similar.

Molly breaks their eye-contact, and Sirius has to take several deep breaths to remember how.

"That's Harry?" Sirius asks of Remus while everyone else is preoccupied.

Remus looks at him with that pitying expression, quirks a smile down at the old wood of the table and says, "Yes, that's Harry. You met him, remember?"

It throws him for a moment, because if there's anything he would remember it would surely be meeting James's son. He opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it and closes it. Scowls down at the table and curses Azkaban like he isn't sure he's ever cursed anything before.

"I..." he says finally, and sighs.

* * *

Everyone is completely right in all that they've told him about Harry. He's polite and quiet and is always double-checking himself before he does something, making sure he gets it right. He's got this strong, silent type of courage around most people, but Sirius gets the feeling that if you got him riled he could be very brave and quite possibly scary.

And he's full of questions once he gets used to being around so many new faces. He asks about everything, what they're doing, why they're doing it and can he help. Predictably, he's the one school-aged kid in the entire house right now that Sirius thinks he might be able to deal with without preferring to pull off his own fingernails.

They sit and talk for hours, in Buckbeak's room or in the drawing room. Harry doesn't ask him to remember anything about their previous meeting, doesn't even mention it, and Sirius wonders if Remus got to him first. At any rate, they enjoy each other's company, and when school starts again it's too soon for his liking.

When summer's done and the new term has started, the house quiets a bit. Dumbledore stops by less frequently and everyone goes back to doing their desk jobs and waiting for new assignments. Most days it's just Remus and Molly in the house beside him, and Molly keeps herself busy with knitting or baking. Remus prefers to be up in the library that once belonged to Sirius's father, though Sirius can't say he understands why

The books there are all nearly falling apart, dusty no matter how many preserving spells his father put on them. They've worn out, now, but still, The pages have stayed bound a lot longer than they would have under normal circumstances.

Remus takes this one armchair most of the time he's up there. It's a horrible shade of green and smells of mothballs and dust, but Remus likes it the same. Sirius sits up there with him sometimes, and the companionable silence stretches on for hours. He likes this rather than the organized chaos that's accompanied the house for the past few months.

In Azkaban it was never quiet. Always screaming, the screaming of fellow prisoners and sometimes, when he caught it, his own. He tells Remus this, and Remus says that once the children have gone back to school it'll be Christmas before the silence lets up and than he'll get tired of it soon enough. He says it with a smile, one that he so rarely uses these days, and Sirius can't help but grin back.

* * *

Whether he likes it or not, Remus does have to go do other things occasionally and leave Sirius with Molly, or sometimes even alone in the old house. He's always afraid that when he comes back, Sirius will have completely lost it and the house will be permanently silent.

Even when Sirius speaks in the harsh, gruff, quiet voice that's so different than the one Remus remembers, it's noise. Sirius says he prefers the silence, but Remus can't stand it. It's maddening.

By the time Christmas rolls around, he's made it through about a quarter of the books in the old library. That isn't, of course, counting the ones that have gone unreadable with age or fallen apart before he could render them perfectly preserved with a charm. For some reason, his repairing charms go wonky because the pages never fit back in the same order.

Arthur is attacked by Voldemort's snake while Remus is on assignment, and he feels immeasurably guilty when he's glad that someone will be back with Sirius before he can be.

When he gets back from his reconnaissance mission, the Weasley clan plus Harry and Sirius look like they've had a long night. Sirius tells him later that it's then, while he's sitting with them at the table and they're uncharacteristically silent, that he begins to be thankful for the noise.

It's almost painful to see Sirius this happy. It's Christmas, and yes, Sirius always did like Christmas.

But when he looks at Sirius now, at the way he's singing Christmas carols horribly out of tune and at the top of his lungs through the halls, not even caring when he wakes his mother's portrait up and it sets up a wail of shrieks; at the way he's flushed with holiday excitement and at seeing so much food in one place, he looks too much like he's _Sirius_ again. Before Azkaban took it's toll on him, took half of him away and replaced it with this cold shell of a representation.

It's then that Remus realizes what he'd been dancing around since Sirius escaped. He's never going to regain his memory, never going to be the same man as he was before. Things aren't going to work out the same way as they did, least of all because James isn't here. They could deal, he thinks, with James being gone. A toast each holiday and a lot of fond memories. They could tell Harry the stories he knows Harry must want to hear about his parents.

But it's more the fact that _Sirius_ isn't here anymore. It might be more painful because there's a living testament to it, or maybe he's just gotten used to the idea that James is gone. Sirius is trying to remember, Remus knows, trying to regain that sense of himself that he had before. But this Sirius is a stranger, a ghost of the person he once was and if that's all Remus can have... well, he's going to take it.

All things are healed with time. He has a map of scars all over his body to prove it, pink and white and old and new. If they don't heal, then they at least become less painful and settle into this uncomfortable ache, and he's got the joints to prove that too. But with Sirius (this Sirius or the old one, he's not sure), they don't have the time it would take for these wounds to heal. As long as they're living each day, they're drawing closer to the day that one of them will have to just stop _being_.

They can't go on like this forever, he knows that. But being the masochist that he's learned to be, he hopes that it's Sirius who goes first. He can deal with that sort of pain, and he can move past it, because he's been doing it since he was old enough to know how. Sirius, however... he isn't sure, and maybe that's what scares him.

* * *

Christmas, Sirius decides, is his favorite time of year. He doesn't feel old, for one, because he's learned that at this time of year everyone's supposed to feel brand new. Not that he does, but it's refreshing in a way nothing else has been.

Harry's there, and he can't believe how much he's missed his presence and wasn't even conscious of it. This is one thing he can give in to, this festiveness.

But it isn't long before it starts to wear on him as well. There are too many people there on Christmas Eve, because Molly likes to have large Christmases and has invited every Order member she's sure doesn't have anywhere better to be. Sirius still gets nervous around them all, especially put into one big room with them, so he escapes, tries to find an area of the house where he can hear himself think.

The library ought to be good enough. His father put soundproof charms on the walls a long time ago, and he's pretty sure they still hold. He throws open the door and steps over the creaky floorboard on his way in, shuts it behind him and sighs in relief.

There are a few bookshelves between the door and the sitting area, so he jumps when he rounds the last one and Remus is in his customary spot. There's a rather large book open across his lap, and his long fingers are dancing over the pages, following the lines as he deciphers the runes that move across parchment.

"Hey," he says a moment later, sitting across from him in a repulsively pink armchair. "Happy Christmas."

Remus looks up and grins, and Sirius grins back, and all his anxiety fades away abruptly. "Family get to you?"

"Yeah. Still can't stand all of them at once," Sirius frowns at the floor rug, toeing at the image of a rather ugly black flower embroidered on it. He has the feeling the flower might once have been white, but he can't say for sure.

"The Weasley clan is better handled in small doses," Remus chuckles, "The whole at once can be rather intimidating."

Sirius nods his agreement, flicking his gaze down to the tome Remus is holding. "What's that?"

"Oh, er. A book of counterjinxes. Old counterjinxes. I don't think it's been translated yet, but I'd sure like to know where your father got his hands on it." He shifts, and Sirius leans forward until they're both looking at the pages.

Waving a hand in dismissal, Sirius watches the runes dance across the page. "Oh, you know. He probably threatened someone until they handed it over. Or had them killed and then took it as a concession. I doubt he ever read it, in any case."

The strange thing about Sirius's memory lapses is that he can remember being a child. Before school, he suspects, and every once and again he gets flashes of summer vacations spent at Grimmauld. He can remember his mother and his father and Regulus, how they treated him and most of all how he didn't like them and wanted more than anything else to be someone, anyone, other than the scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

His theory (and Remus's, when he shares it) is that he wasn't happy, then, so the Dementors couldn't take those memories. His years at Hogwarts, however, are almost entirely gone. He remembers the course matter, but spending time with James and Remus and Peter is missing. Lily's missing, too, but he knows Harry has her eyes. He does remember particularly rotten detentions, or times when they were fighting amongst themselves.

Losing a Quidditch match in his sixth year that may have made Gryffindor lose the cup because he and Regulus allowed their petty family business to get in the way of the game, he remembers that. Nearly getting Snape killed and Remus not speaking to him for three months, he remembers that in painful clarity.

If he were to have one wish, Sirius thinks, it would be to remember all of his happy times.

* * *

As Christmas ends and the new year approaches, Sirius grows surly. Harry will be going back to school soon, leaving the house to the silence that he finds he can no longer stand. Leaving him with Molly and Remus and Buckbeak. He knows it's important that Harry get educated, but that can't stop the ball of jealousy and selfishness that seems to have taken permanent residence in his gut as school approaches.

He gives Harry James's half of the two-way mirror. It seems... right, somehow. Even if he only knows the object's history because Remus has told him. As he watches the long line of students and escorts get onto the Knight Bus, Sirius can't help but feel as though the worst end has come and being stuck in this silent house with the ghosts of his childhood is like being admitted to Hell itself.

When the bus finally takes off, leaving nothing behind but an inverted blueblack image on the backs of Sirius's eyelids, he climbs the myriad stairs to the highest floor of the house. It happens to be his bedroom, the one he still uses on occasion. It looks out over the grimy London back-street and the park across the way.

He watches the automobiles drive by from the nearly dizzying height, and wishes for the first time that he can remember to have his flying motorbike back. It's a sudden, seemingly irrational desire, but he can't shake it off.

He remembers liking high places, like a lightbulb has suddenly gone off in his head.

The seat made by the joining of branches on the old oak tree at Hogwarts. Sirius remembers sitting here while his friends sat beneath against the trunk. His broomstick, ancient now but top of the line in his day, zooming around the Quidditch pitch scanning for Bludgers.

His sleek, black motorbike taking off from the ground for the first time. Speeds of nearly sixty miles an hour in a level of the atmosphere where nothing can touch you. The wind, burning his face and blowing his hair back. He never wore a helmet if he could get away with it, enjoyed the cold sting of the air against his flushed face.

Sirius remembers watching the ground from his vantage point, watching the country roads flying by under his tires, even as high up as they were. Watching the little animals scurry as he revved the engine, because even they knew something was off with the flying vehicle.

When he comes down from this memory, he's happier than he can remember being since Azkaban. The house is quiet around him, pressing into him as if he's become part of the atmosphere. But he refuses to be, not this time, and he wishes there were someone in the house to share his happiness with.

* * *

"Remus?"

"Yes, Sirius?"

"Whatever happened to my flying motorbike?"

Remus looks up sharply, eyeing him like he's just asked the most preposterous question imaginable. He closes the book with a sigh, setting it down on the wood of the table. They're the only two here today, so the kitchen is free game.

"You've got to understand about that," he says slowly, gauging for Sirius's reaction. Sirius nods, urges him to continue, and he sighs again. "You leant it to Hagrid to take Harry to where Dumbledore had wanted him to stay. After that, when he got back... well, Hagrid really didn't know what to do with it. You were on your way to Azkaban already, and I..." he pauses. "I didn't want anybody finding me. He did the only thing he could think of."

Sirius has gone still, sitting stiff in his chair. He remembers part of that, but not all of it. He didn't know that's how Harry had gotten to his aunt and uncle's house, for instance. Clearing his throat, he urges, "Yeah?"

"He gave it to Arthur Weasley, who's been tinkering with it and trying to see how it ticks," he waits for this to sink it. "The car that Harry flew to school in his second year was an experiment with the charm on your motorbike. He wanted to see if it was adaptable to automobiles as well, which as it turned out, worked. From what I've heard from Ron, though, it not only gave the car the ability to fly but it's own personality as well."

This is a lot to take in, and Sirius really can't get passed the fact that his godson _flew a car to school in his second year_.

"Arthur is a genius when he puts his mind to it," Remus finishes, still watching Sirius's face as he processes all of this.

"So, wait," Sirius says a moment later, comprehension dawning. "So it's still... I mean, it still works, right? Do you think maybe..."

Remus shakes his head sharply, and Sirius falls silent. "It still works, I'm assuming. But you know Dumbledore would never let you have it back."

The statement hangs in the air between them. Remus makes it sound like Dumbledore is his parent or something, and can watch his every move and tell him what to do. Sirius has the urge to get it back just because Dumbledore apparently says he can't, which is more like the arrogant, authority-defying teenager he must have once been.

"You're probably right," he agrees, and picks at a spot in the wood. Remus looks like he wants to say something, but Sirius pushes off from the table and announces that he thinks he'll go hang around upstairs.

* * *

Sirius knows he likes girls. There's never really been a question about that, because as far as he's heard he never deviated. And girls, well. They're soft, malleable, and they apparently used to be falling over themselves to get to him.

They're also nonsensical to a certain degree, but that's to be expected. He doesn't understand them and he doubts that he ever did.

Remus seems more the type to understand the sorts of things girls do, even if it sounds silly to say it. When February dawns, bright and cold and still glinting off the snow that hasn't melted yet, Sirius sees something that he didn't before. Whether he chose not to, he doesn't know.

Tonks is spending more and more time at Grimmauld when she isn't working. She's taken to having dinner with them more often than not, asking Remus all sorts of questions that really shouldn't interest anybody. Remus does looked a bit miffed, startled that anyone except maybe Sirius would be interested in the types of things she's asking.

Most of them aren't even that personal. They scratch the surface of it, yes, but they never delve deep enough to actually make Remus react automatically with the barrier that blocks his soul from view. What kind of books interest him, what sort of spellwork he's best at.

Sirius thinks he knows what she's doing. It might just be his suspicion, but it still doesn't help the knot of jealousy that her questions evoke. The way it's supposed to be, how it's been and how they're both comfortable with, is he's the only one that gets to know that much about Remus. He's known him since they were both eleven years old, stayed friends with him all through his gangly, awkward teenage years.

Sirius might have been a prat, but Remus trusted him and James and Peter with his darkest secret when he could trust no one else. They'd survived death and destruction and betrayal and Azkaban and more full moons than Sirius can count together. Tonks is obtuse if she thinks she could get between them and pull Remus away.

That probably isn't her true intention. She probably just wants to get to know Remus, because even Sirius knows he's a good man. Remus deserves her, deserves so much more than Sirius with his fleeting memory can give him.

He doesn't say anything to him about his suspicions, locks it away in the back of his mind and keeps the key close at hand.

* * *

Tonks is by no means annoying. To Sirius, maybe, in the way she's so curious, but not in the way she acts. She's quite the woman, caring and feisty and everything that anyone could want.

But it has to come to a head sometime, and at dinner one night, she's finally getting down to those questions that Sirius has been fearing she'd ask.

Molly pretends not to notice it, and Arthur looks away, but he's been watching this for the past month and he can't take it anymore. He does have the decency to wait, though, and when Tonks has gone home for the night and Remus is on his way up the stairs, Sirius stops him.

"Can I... er, talk to you about something?" He asks, twisting his fingers behind his back. Remus looks tired but nods, and Sirius takes a certain satisfaction in knowing that Remus won't deny him anything.

"What is it?" he asks when they duck into the drawing room, eyebrow raised at Sirius as he shuts the door.

"It's... well, it's Tonks. I think she fancies you." It comes out faster than he wanted it to, a jumble of syllables and sounds and it's too early in the conversation. He hasn't worked up to it.

"Er," Remus says, frowns down at the carpet and then back up at Sirius. He's still standing by the door, leaning back against it casually though his fingers are itching. Remus takes a seat on the worn sofa and puts his head in his hands.

"She's been... you know. You've been there. She's all over you, asking you questions and I..." he continues, then stops, because he sees the invisible line he's about to cross that is potentially dangerous. "I don't know," he sighs, deciding to step back from the precipice and not chance it with Remus.

There is an awkward, too-long pause and Sirius thinks that for friends who have known each other as long as they have this shouldn't be so hard.

"Sirius," Remus says softly, looking up to where Sirius is still tense. "What are you trying to say?"

"I... you'd still be here, with me, right? You wouldn't... move out? It's... too quiet without you here."

Sirius closes his eyes, digs his fingernails into his palms until they leave little crescent shapes in the skin. It sounded stupid in his head, and he shouldn't have said anything, but he can't keep thinking that each day Remus might get tired of his clumsiness and just leave.

When he opens them again, Remus is looking at him like he's appalled that Sirius even has to ask. Everything that Remus couldn't say, wouldn't say, is in that look. Sirius is stupid for thinking that he'd ever leave without proper reason, that Remus is going to stay with him until forever freezes over because of some pact they formed twenty-odd years ago.

Because Remus really enjoys being around Sirius, whether it be Sirius as he is now or the old, slightly more annoying version.

* * *

The months fly by faster than either of them can articulate. It's almost summer now, it's going to begin the cycle all over again. Sirius has taken to running around the house in dog form, panting and grinning and laying at Remus's feet when he wears himself out. Harry'll be back soon, and everything will be back to normal.

In those months, those happy times, they know that it's all going to end. This war, this lifestyle. Voldemort will be defeated because Harry and the Order are going to see it out together, are going to fight the Death Eaters until it kills them because it's the right thing to do. Sirius chides himself for thinking that he might be sad that it'll be over, because then no one will have any excuse to come visit him anymore.

"I don't know," he says one day, when he's feeling particularly cheerful and he and Remus have been talking about the future in a way they probably shouldn't. "When this is over, I'll only get to see you all the time." Before Remus can set up chase (which he also probably shouldn't, because he'll be hurting later), Sirius has transformed and is bounding away.

And he does hurt later, but the tumble to the ground when he finally caught up with Sirius and even Sirius's hot stinking dog breath on his face is worth it.

* * *

It's nearly the end of June when things go horribly wrong.

Without thinking about it, Sirius leave Dumbledore's hastily scrawled note and grabs the floo powder off the mantlepiece in the kitchen.

"What...?" Remus asks, takes the paper. "Sirius, don't–"

But Sirius is already disappearing in the emerald flames, and Remus makes sure his wand is inside his jacket pocket before scrambling to follow.

The rest of the Order is gathering there, in this small shack in what smells like the middle of a pine forest. Dumbledore is waving Fawkes off again, to warn another group of Order members.

"I just received word," he says quickly to the others gathered there; Kingsley and Tonks and Hestia Jones. "Harry and a group of friends have gone to the Ministry. Voldemort has lured him there, to retrieve the weapon, because he himself cannot touch it. Once Moody arrives – ah, there he is, we've got to act quickly."

Moody suddenly appears next to Dumbledore, nodding his agreement and starting to hand out Floo powder.

When he gets to Sirius, he stops a moment and barks, "Damnit, Sirius. You can't be here!"

"Let him go, Alastar." Dumbledore says calmly. "We don't have time."

Moody growls, but sends Sirius through the flames anyway.

When they get there, get past the defenses in the Department of Mysteries, Harry and his small group of friends are scattered around the room, fighting off Death Eaters where they can and avoiding curses where they can't.

Without thinking, Sirius heads into the fight. He may not remember his best friend's face or the way Remus used to trip himself up when he was a teenager, but he does remember _this_. The fight never left him, was just postponed for a time, like now, when it would be useable. He remembered to keep his footing straight and to dodge anything that moved, light or person or flying object.

He remembered the adrenaline rush, and it's okay if he didn't because he's feeling it now. It's exhilarating, weaving between curses and firing his own back into the knot of Death Eaters.

If he remembers anything at all later, it'll be the moment when he gets so caught up in the bloodlust that he forgets himself. When he's so arrogant and distracted and, he thinks, _him_ again, he forgets.

Forgets that he's not immortal or invincible. Forgets that he can and probably will be shot down and forgets that his godson is standing right next to him and has to remember this forever.

He's laughing when the jet of green light hits him, sinks into his chest and clutches at his insides. It's so bright, but he doesn't close his eyes. The flare blocks out all thought, time, movement.

And he remembers, in that moment before he dies, all the things he lived for.

* * *

_Um, sorry if the ending was abrupt. I ran out of steam. So yeah. _

* * *


End file.
